James Chase - Fast Buck

‘Never mind the details, darling, just tell me how much.’

‘Would fifty ruin you?’ he said sullenly. He liked to explain why he wanted the money. He justified himself in his own eyes when he gave her a fictitious list of debts.

She opened her bag and checked the amount of money she had in it.

‘I’ve only forty.’

‘That would do. I’l be seeing you tomorrow night. Can’t you squeeze something substantial out of Kile? I hate this continual asking. Three or four hundred would see me through to the end of the month.

He should be good for that if you’re nice to him.’

‘You mean if I behave more like a tart than I usual y do?’ she said quietly.

‘There’s no need to talk like that!’ he snapped. ‘I didn’t mean anything of the kind. You can persuade him your expenses…’

‘But don’t you understand he hasn’t any money?’ she said impatiently. ‘It was you who told me he owes thousands.’

‘A man like Kile can always raise money. People trust him. That’s why I picked on him. Hasn’t he made a hit with the Rajah? A man with his looks and reputation can always get money.’

She gave him four ten-dollar bills.

‘You must try and manage with that,’ she said. ‘I can’t ask him for any more just yet. I don’t know how I’m going to manage myself: I’m cleaned out.’

He touched the gold chain bracelet around her wrist.

‘I could hock that for you,’ he said, obviously pleased with the idea. ‘You must have a lot of junk you could raise money on. I could handle it for you. I know all the best places.’ There was a boast in his voice. He was proud of his knowledge of pawnshops. ‘We can get the stuff back when we’ve hit the jack-pot.’

‘I’ll think about it.’ The note of misery in her voice made him look sharply at her. ‘Have you forgotten this belonged to mother?’ Her fingers touched the bracelet lovingly.

‘Well, she wouldn’t mind,’ Gillis said, scowling. ‘She hocked it herself, if I remember rightly, when the old man wouldn’t give me a new suit.’

‘Good night, Adam.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t look so damned miserable at times,’ he said crossly as he got out of the car. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow night. You might look through your things. That fur coat he gave you… you don’t need it until the winter…’

‘Good night, Adam,’ she repeated.

They stood facing each other for a moment. She was glad he couldn’t meet her eyes. She leaned forward and kissed his cheek.

‘Try and come early,’ she pleaded. ‘I want to talk to you, darling.’

‘About nine,’ he said, his voice flat and disinterested. Already he was thinking of more important things. He had forty dollars in his pocket. The night was still young. He might do worse than take Lois back to his room. He might persuade her to do that comic dance of hers again. She had wanted fifty dollars the last time: ridiculous! She might do it for twenty if he could convince her that was all she would get. Yes, he’d go along and pick her up. He felt in the mood for Lois’s kind of fun.

He watched Eve as she moved back to the club. She was an odd girl. Sometimes he wondered about her. She didn’t treat him as if he was her brother. There were times when she acted as if she were in love with him. He touched his pencil-lined moustache, frowning. Odd!

After he had left the parking lot, Dallas came out of the shadows and stood looking after him.

Harmon Purvis had a small villa on East Boulevard: a modest, three-bedroom affair with a small garden crammed with roses and a Clematis Jackmanii over the front door.

A light showed in one of the downstairs rooms, and through the open window came the brittle notes of Chopin’s Etude in E Flat.

Dallas got out of his car, pushed open the gate and walked up the path. The night was hot and still, and the perfume from the roses was a little overpowering.

He dug his thumb into the bell-push, leaned forward to sniff at the purple flower of the clematis — as big as a breakfast plate.

Purvis came to the door and opened it. He was in his shirt sleeves and had changed his shoes for slippers.

‘You’re late,’ he said, giving Dallas a sharp look. ‘I was thinking of going to bed.’

‘You’re lucky to have a bed,’ Dal as said, fol owing him into the comfortable front room. It was lined with books and restfully lit by table lamps. Purvis was a bachelor, but he knew how to make himself comfortable. He had a Filipino boy to run the house and cook, and in his spare time he looked after the tiny garden himself. ‘I don’t get any time for my bed,’ Dal as went on, lowering himself gratefully into a comfortable easy chair.

Purvis wasn’t paying at ention. He was listening to the concluding passages of the Etude.

‘You should listen to this,’ he said, leaning against the radiogram and beating time with his finger.

‘It’s the most difficult of any of Chopin’s Etudes. Even Paderewski used to make some mistakes when he played it.’

‘Never mind Paderewski — he’s dead,’ Dal as said, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles. ‘Turn it off for the love of Mike. I’m here on business.’

Reluctantly Purvis turned off the disc and sat down opposite Dallas.

‘Do you good to listen to some of the classics,’ he said, placing his finger-tips together and staring at Dallas from over them. ‘You’re losing your sense of culture.’

‘Never had one. Don’t offer me a whisky: I’d accept it.’

‘I haven’t any in the house,’ Purvis said happily. ‘I don’t touch the stuff: wastes money, dul s your perception and rots your liver.’

Dallas sighed.

‘So that’s what’s the matter with me. Maybe I’d better switch to gin.’

Purvis watched him light a cigarette.

‘You’ve been to the Frou-Frou Club tonight?’ he asked tentatively.

Yeah,’ Dal as said, ‘and I’m wil ing to bet my eye-teeth Kile’s get ing set to grab the Chit abad collection.’

‘What makes you think that?’ Purvis asked, sit ing forward.

‘He saw Rico tonight, but maybe I’d better start in at the beginning. Talk about a break! It fel into my lap,’ and he gave Purvis a detailed account of what he had seen and heard at the club, as wel as the conversation he had overheard between Eve and Gillis as they sat in the car.

Purvis was enthralled. He just sat still, staring at Dallas, drinking in every word, and not interrupting.

When Dallas had finished, he got up and began to pace up and down.

‘What a break!’ he said. ‘It’s unbelievable! I’ve worked on this goddamn case for fifteen years, and never thought I’d get anywhere with it, and then suddenly it’s handed to us on a plate.’

Dallas grinned.

‘I made it sound too easy,’ he said, stretching out his long legs. ‘If it hadn’t been for a hunch…’

‘Never mind that. These people must be after the collection,’ Purvis said, coming to stand over Dallas. ‘This morning Kile and the Gil is girl cal on the Rajah. In the evening Gil is talks in terms of half a million. The connection’s obvious. It looks as if the Rajah has offered Kile a half a million to get his jewels back, and Gillis plans to gyp him.’

‘The whole idea seems to have come from Gillis,’ Dal as pointed out. ‘Kile is being used as a stooge.

But how is Kile going to get the jewels? Think he knows where they are?’

‘I don’t know,’ Purvis said, sit ing down. ‘He must have some idea otherwise he wouldn’t have seen the Rajah this morning.’

‘Who’s this guy Baird, Gil is is so strung up about?’

‘If it’s Verne Baird,’ Purvis said, crossing his long, bony legs, ‘and I’d imagine it must be, he’s suspect number one for Jean Bruce’s kil ing.’